Advertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas by a sponsor. Different mediums are used for such promotion, including television, radio, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, movies etc. Advertisements are usually placed at a strategic position to attract the attention of the potential customers.
The huge popularity of Internet as a medium of information has made it an important forum for posting advertisements. The concept of online advertising has gained popularity because of the advantages it offers over advertising in newspapers or printed publications.
The internet makes it easier for consumers to search and learn about products and purchase them at any time. Online advertisements can be easily and quickly updated to reflect any changes in product information. Photographs can be easily included in online advertisements. Examples of online advertisements include Banner ads, Fly-outs, Pop-Ups, Pop-Unders, Skyscrapers, classified listings etc. In some cases, for example in some classified listings, the purchaser does not have a choice over the position of the advertisement. In such cases, the advertisements are posted at predefined positions on the web page. In other cases, for example in the case of some banner ads, online advertising requires purchasing of an advertising space or position on a web page by an individual or an organization.
The cost of an advertisement generally depends on the size of the advertisement, position of the advertisement on the web page, and to some extent on the timing of the advertisement (i.e., the instant of time when the advertisement is displayed to a user). Generally, bigger the advertisement, higher is the cost associated with the purchase of advertising space. So for example, a bigger banner ad will be costlier than a smaller one. The position of the advertisement on the web page is another crucial aspect governing the cost. A properly placed advertisement is more likely to attract the attention of the web page viewer than an improperly placed advertisement and therefore command a higher price. In some cases, the timing of the advertisement plays a significant role in deciding the cost of advertising. For example, an advertisement that appears in a morning newspaper is likely to cost more than similar advertisements that appear in newspapers published during other parts of the day.
Most online advertisement systems do not take the abovementioned factors into account for determining the pricing of the advertisements. In most systems, the advertisement owner or sponsor has little or no control over the position of the advertisement on the web page. Even those systems that provide some flexibility to the owners over positioning advertisements, generally do not consider pricing while the positioning of the advertisement. Such systems charge uniformly for all advertising spaces. An example of such a system is online classified listings. In online classified listings, the list of advertisements is generally in random order and the advertisement owners generally do not have a choice over the position of their advertisement in the listing. This may cause the advertisement owner paying a higher price for an ineffective advertisement space.
In some systems, the advertisement owner has a choice over the positioning of his advertisement on the web. For example, the owner may have the choice over the position and the size of the banner ad. In such systems, the interested individuals or organizations bid for a particular advertising space on the web page. The highest bidder gets the particular advertising space. However, the highest bidder oftentimes pays far more money for a particular advertising space without true realization of the effectiveness of the space. Moreover, such systems do not give the advertiser the flexibility to change their advertisement positions in a real time manner. The procedure for changing the position of the advertisement is lengthy and cumbersome and any frequent changes in the positioning of the advertisement are likely to result in time and monetary losses. Such losses may tempt the advertisement owner to refrain from changing the position of his/her advertisement.
Certain systems (for example, GOOGLE personalized page) do allow for users to change the position of items on their page. However, such systems change the view for the owner of the page only. It does not affect the view of all other users browsing the site.
Sites like MSN SPACE or GOOGLE offer the drag and drop function for users to customize their homepage or personal space. However, it is not used for ranking the information, nor is it associated with payment. In GOOGLE, one person's personalized homepage is only available to that individual and other people cannot see what the customized page looks like. Therefore, every time a drag and drop operation is performed on a particular item, it only affects the view of the individual performing the drag and drop operation. In MSN SPACE, only the space owner can re-organize the different items on the page. As a visitor, one can only see the changes the space owner has made to the page, but cannot make any changes to it.
In light of the abovementioned drawbacks of existing systems, there is a need for a system that enables an individual or an organization to place their online advertisement at position of their choice on the web page in a cost-efficient manner. The system should also enable its users to change the position of the advertisement on the web page depending on the business requirements.